Why do parents send their students to private schools? The staff is educated exactly the same. The difference is in delivery. There are smaller class sizes, subject specialists, more one-on-one attention and few special-needs kids who take time away from other students.

Wouldn’t this be nice for all B.C. students? This is what BCTF members are fighting for.

Private schools get government funding as well as huge tuition. Our government short changes our students by at least $1,000 per student. The schools could do amazing things with proper funding.

This is creating a two-class education system. More students entering the private system is taking more government funding away from the public system.

The bargaining process uses millions of dollars but has never been effective. Get rid of the employer bargaining group and go back to local bargaining. Put all that wasted money back where it belongs — in the classroom. The biggest loser is a better education system for our kids.

Nina Fowell, Maple Ridge

BCTF ‘defiance’ hurts kids

Watching the BCTF perform its regular negotiating posture has become very irritating. Where do these unionized malcontents come up with their self aggrandizing philosophy that they somehow are the elitists, above the rest, untouchable, all-knowing, all-caring martyrs who alone are capable of infusing wisdom and knowledge into our young?

Measure them not on their fitness to teach, their ranking within their peers, they say. Just pay us more, for the sake of the kids.

This amazingly out-of-touch group is demanding more remuneration to teach fewer children in smaller classes, refuse to be held accountable for their performance and offer a finished product that after 12 years often graduates lacking basic math and writing skills. The BCTF is continuing its downward spiral, where teachers, good and bad, are branded by this nonsensical union defiance.

What makes it exciting is the emotional investment of having one’s country playing in the game.

Best soccer? Maybe a few games will give us that. Best players? Absolutely!

Jim Norris, Delta

Volunteer for council

I am on a strata council and take exception to the remark of letter-writer Wendy Qureshi about people with time on their hands and having a position of “power”. It is people like Qureshi who make it difficult to get good council members, a volunteer job involving endless hours of trying to solve petty complaints that are made from residents who do nothing to try and help the council to make their place a better place to live.

I’m sure there is more to Qureshi’s window-washing complaint that we are hearing about but involving the RCMP is ridiculous. They certainly have more serious things to worry about.

Perhaps Qureshi should volunteer to go on council and see if she can help that way.

Jan Armour, Surrey

Bike madness continues

So we are spending multi-millions on the Ironworkers Bridge to widen the sidewalks for maybe 350 bike crossing per day in average? Poor souls stuck in vehicular traffic trying to cross are ignored and scorned by the politicians 135,000 vehicles.

Wouldn’t it be wiser to spend a million to combine Cassiar and the McGill on-ramp to ease and facilitate merging tie-ups coming out of Cassiar Tunnel?

We are already paying an obscene amount of taxes and fees to all three level of government — four if you add Metro Vancouver — so sharpen your pencil and shed some fat.

Amalgamate the municipalities. We have too many mayors, too many politicians and too many police and fire departments. Besides, they already have the money if they want to proceed — it’s called the carbon tax.

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